The Future of Food

---

The Future of Food 
Current global population is estimated at 7.6 billion people. There’s enough food to go 
around in the world currently (2019) but things are changing. Scientists estimate that the 
population will reach 11.2 billion people by the year 2100. The UN reports that half of 
that increase will come from just 9 countries (in order of importance): India, Nigeria, the 
Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Tanzania, the United States, Uganda, 
and Indonesia. Population growth rates are far higher in low and middle income countries 
and falling in high income countries. 
Incomes are rising fast in many low and medium income countries, particularly India and 
China, who together comprise 37% of the current global population. If you add in 
Africa, with another 1.3 billion people, this is over half of the global population. Given the 
patterns of growth, in the future, Africa and Asia will hold far more than half the world’s 
people. This rise in income creates a rising demand for higher quality foods, including 
meat, dairy, and fresh fruit and vegetables
. 
The constraints 
Our current food systems cannot handle the increase in demand overall. There are two 
main issues at work. The first is that we will need to produce more food in the same 
closed system in which we now feed 30% fewer people. The second is that agriculture and 
food production is mostly an extractive system, and is environmentally destructive. If we 
want to eat, we need to re-think what we mean by food, where we get it from, and how we 
eat. A third major issue is that the impacts from changing climate are already being felt, 
and mostly by the world’s poorest. One thing we don’t talk about enough is that the 
increased CO2 from climate change can have a fertilizing effect, producing larger grains, 
fruits, or vegetables. However, it can also dramatically reduce the nutrient content of the 
foods we grow, exchanging higher carbohydrate content for fewer micro-nutrients. 

---

Small fish for small people. Household aquaculture production in Bangladesh. Photo by the 
author. 
Food production has one of the most important environmental footprints there is, but we 
have to eat something. Some will say, eat less meat! But meat production can be 
completely sustainable, with grazed animals living on lands that are too poor for grain 
production. Most of the meat we eat in North America is grain fed and that is less 
sustainable. But in the other hemisphere, Australians and New Zealanders graze cattle and 
sheep because they have lots of land that is well suited to that type of production, and 
those animals are not displacing grain production. But despite the hype around moving 
away from beef, chicken production vastly outweighs all other types of livestock 
production, in the US at least. 
Field crops are hugely destructive. They require the complete razing of the existing 
ecosystem, whether it was a grassland, a forest, or a swamp, it must be completely 
destroyed in order to put in mono-cropping systems. Farmers take off the most nutrient-

---

dense part of the plant, the seed (be it wheat, corn, barley) or the fruit (strawberries, 
apples) or the whole plant (broccoli, cabbages), the root (carrots, potatoes). Year over 
year, this extraction from the land leaves the soil depleted. 
About a third of global food is wasted. In wealthy nations, it happens at the consumer end, 
as we buy more food than we can eat. In poor nations, it happens at the farm where people 
lack facilities to store food, and are not well integrated into markets to be able to sell 
before foods spoil. 
We cannot increase food production without more land, more water, or better quality soils. 
Technologies that allow more efficient production are important are are a major focus of 
agricultural research (examples from the University of Guelph). Even with all these lines 
of inquiry, it is my opinion that our food choices will gradually drift away from what we 
are used to seeing in the wealthy nations of the west and more towards what poor people 
and Asians are eating now.